The Research Of Ruan Ji’s Metaphysics And Aesthetics With Self-awareness Of Man As A Mainline

The self-awareness of man was originated from Wei, Jin, Northern and Southern dynasties, which had great significance in the history of Chinese philosophy and made great influence in the history of Chinese aesthetics. The so-called self-awareness of man means that self-value of human being had been found, the exterior authority had been broken, and the sensibility of individual had been made public. All of these had promoted the transformation of aesthetics. Therefore, this paper plans to base on the self-awareness of man, to discover Ruanji’s thoughts of this issue. I will do this work on three points, which are the Metaphysics of Ruanji, the life style of Ruanji, and the literary creation of Ruanji.The political turmoil in the End of Han Dynasty had broken the background of Confucianism, which was the basic principle of scholars in the period and urge the scholars to find new thoughts to adapt to the situation. When the SiMa House usurped the throne in late Wei, Ruanji was consumingly depressed. After this political event, Ruanji changed his philosophy direction. In the previous stage, Ruanji absorbed the thoughts of Lao Zi. He wanted to save the Confucian ethical doctrines by integrating ethical codes and nature. In the later stage, Ruanji just only advocated nature. But what important is that the advocating of nature did not mean that Ruanji was the follower of the Taoism. The difference between Ruanji and Lao Zi is that what Ruanji want to do is to prove that the individual has their self-conciousness, and the self-conciousness would make difference in the theory of aesthetic.The informality act of Ruanji was coincident with his philosophy, which made Ruanji as a representative figure of Wei-Jin Style. Although the informality act of Ruanji was personalized, he was exceedingly suffering and helpless. How did this phenomenon come out? In my opinon, the self-awareness of man is the key element, which bring about the conflict between ideal and reality. Because of the weakness of ideal, Ruanji had to face the reality all by himself.In this situation, the only way to unfix himself is composing poems. Under the influence of Ruanji’s character and the history circumstances, his poem is difficult to understand not only for modern people but also for person in the classical age. The connotation of his poems was the vivid reflection of Ruanji’s real emotion. This is different from the poems of Jikang’s. Finally, Ruanji’s poem became the model of the poem in the history of Chinese literature, and the aesthetic characteristics of his poems became the aesthetic ideal.